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Wait… where do professors live?

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 02:51:38 2021 No.13840278 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>13840413 >>13840466 >>13840495 >>13840587 >>13840610 >>13840636 >>13840858

Hey /sci/,

Math grad here. I just went through the process of buying an apartment and as I’ve been thinking about this one question came to my mind: where do professors even live?

No, for real. I finished my math degree over 2 years ago and I have had an stable job ever since and it still was really hard to get a loan approved. How do professors even manage to buy real state? Professors with my years of experience most likely make waaay less money which would price them out from most good projects near the university’s they work. Not only that but until you get tenured, you just work contracts which means you don’t actually have a stable job which banks hate.

So where do professors live? And I mean people who are just professors so no grad students teaching classes. Do they live in the dorms of their college? Do they rent eternally?

Any academic here manage to buy any property?

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 03:05:14 No.13840308 Report

Quoted By: >>13840549

They rent like most people. Some save up enough money to buy a studio apartment. Few have actual private properties.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 03:56:48 No.13840413 Report

Quoted By: >>13840549

>>13840278
They are rentcucks and live paycheck to paycheck like everyone else. Just because they are professors in a field doesn't mean they aren't economically illiterate.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 04:24:19 No.13840466 Report

Quoted By: >>13840549

>>13840278
They just don't live in university zones, outside of le city property prices are low, like really low

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 04:46:21 No.13840495 Report

Quoted By: >>13840549 >>13840826

>>13840278
We get denied. It's nearly impossible for us to own property until we get tenure or tenure track at least.
The system used to provide high job stability in exchange for low pay. But now academia is low pay and low stability as well. It's just exploitation at this point.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:23:44 No.13840549 Report

Quoted By: >>13840559

>>13840308
>>13840413
>>13840466
>>13840495

When I thought about this question this is what I figured but fuck was I hoping to get something different. I already imagined that due to low income and bad job security, academics would have no luck with banks. But maybe I imagined that universities themselves could provide credit to finance small apartments or something. I suppose this is kinda irrational but it is hard to accept that what is probably the most important job (university professor) also has the worst prospects for standard of living. I can’t imagine being a rentcuck, let alone being one well after your 30s but if you depend on getting tenure, odds are you’ll be rentcucking way past your 40s.

God damn this world is doomed. I think the most rational move is to graduate, then work in finance in your 20s and 30s while maybe taking some grad classes on the side, then quickly getting a PhD in your 40s and then become a researcher (assuming that during your stay in finance your net worth got to well past 7 figures). I think this is the profile of the average academic in the future. Hell, I’d do this myself.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:27:25 No.13840558 Report

Quoted By: >>13840630

Not telling you, faggot.
>t. son of a professor who will probably work in academia

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:27:33 No.13840559 Report

Quoted By: >>13840630

>>13840549
Why would you become an academicuck after making it in industry?

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:43:11 No.13840587 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840278
Usually in the cupboard in a more senior professors office, sometimes they get a full office to themselves in which case they usually live there. Other than that with their mothers is quite common as in communal professor adoption centers where women can come and adopt a professor.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:52:04 No.13840598 Report

Quoted By: >>13840653

A fully tenured professor at a major university likely has a five bedroom house with a three car garage in a nice neighborhood. An associate professor at a local directional school probably rents an apartment but some will rent a house. At the associate level it doesn't make sense to buy because you need to be ready to jump at any opening for an assistant professorship at another school or even an associate professorship at a better school.
Once you're a full professor, not only are you likely to stay put but you're also likely to have built up a network of contacts for consulting gigs. Many professors earn more doing consulting than they earn from their salary as a professor but it's that association with the university that opens the doors to these consulting jobs. One of my ME professors traveled around the country as an expert witness. Being "Professor Smith from the University of Major State" is what the legal teams wanted him to be in order to impress the juries.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 05:56:15 No.13840610 Report

Quoted By: >>13840656

>>13840278
Fuck off to >>>/biz/ or something if you want to advertise for loans and banks.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:12:49 No.13840630 Report

Quoted By: >>13840749

>>13840558
Well, that’s a shame. I’d love a comment from someone who actually knows the long-time living arrangements of an academic.

>>13840559
If you ask me this I’d say freedom. I think I can safely say that I’m not particularly in love in business or finance. I am mostly in love with math. Thinking about business is fun in the way that actually setting up a business that can generate a profit is sort of like an interesting puzzle that if you solve you get free money out of (because the business pays for itself and you get to take the extra). But what I actually love is the math. And in my job I get to do math and research most of the time, but all of it is focused on what the ‘important number’ will be next week, next month, next quarter, next year. And it is fun, but it is clear that I’m not working on a model to predict what % of loans will default this month because I love it. I wish I could use my time and effort to research whatever the fuck I want. And once I’m rich enough I can live off of my investments, I’ll probably buy that freedom by quitting my job and working in an university.

I think I picture the future of university as a country club for retired 40-somethings who live off of real state and just use their salaries to pay off taxes from their profits. All while researching what they want and teaching the young ones to see which ones are smart and refer them to their old employers.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:16:29 No.13840636 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840278
I rented from an prof who had something like 4 other renters in a couple houses, he didn't have any money and was in debt

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:25:53 No.13840653 Report

Quoted By: >>13840892

>>13840598
Yeah I imagine that. Tenured professors definitely live the life... but that 'life' starts at 40 or 50+ so it's kinda fucked.

>At the associate level it doesn't make sense to buy because you need to be ready to jump at any opening for an assistant professorship at another school or even an associate professorship at a better school.

This is an aspect of it that I had not thought about and I guess that is a scenario where it would make sense to rent instead of buying. But still, I imagine a better future where you are teaching at one school so you buy a house nearby. Then when you get a better offer somewhere else
a) Your pay raise should be enough to open you up to get a new mortgage in the new area
b) You should rent out your original property so it pays itself while you now focus on paying for your new house

And then you accumulate real state all over the place. Believe it or not this is kinda how it works in finance and tech. You get paid so much money you can buy up like 3 apartments by the time you are 40.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:27:41 No.13840656 Report

Quoted By: >>13840664 >>13840900

>>13840610
I am not advertising for loans and banks. I actually wish you could just save up for like a year or two and then buy a house. It sucks that you fucking need 20x leverage from a bank just to buy a simple two bedroom apartment in a decent area (my case). But let me tell you one thing, it beats rentcucking. I wonder if rentcucks keep track of how much money they spend renting and then figure that if instead of rentcucking they had bought they could already own over 50% equity in a house they could call their own.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:31:28 No.13840664 Report

Quoted By: >>13840675

>>13840656
They would have to keep track and know how much money their landlord spent on new appliances, improvements, taxes, and insurance to have any level of accuracy since they saved a ton of maintenance and appliance money by renting, so its not like the full rent would have gone to equity.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 06:36:19 No.13840675 Report

Quoted By: >>13840900 >>13841377

>>13840664
I know it's not that simple but let's forget equity. Let's instead of think a simpler metric: % of loan paid off (in terms of how many monthly payments you make).

I looked around and if I wanted to rent the apartment I bought, it would cost 103% of what I pay now in mortage + maintenance + amenities. This means that roughly every month you pay rent, you could have instead paid off an entire month of living in your own place.

So my loan is for 30 years so I will have to make 360 monthly payments. If you rent for just 3 years, that is already 10% paid off. This of course will be less than 10% principal paid off, but then remember that real state tends to appreciate more than it depreciates so in those 3 years who knows, you could already have between 20%-30% equity. That is instead equity you bought for someone else.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 07:23:48 No.13840749 Report

Quoted By: >>13840840 >>13840935

>>13840630
Do you really think you'd have more freedom in academia? When do you think academics actually end up getting research freedom?

Your post kind of reeks of naivety. Most professors just research what they know will secure funding until their old fucks. Then they play around with whatever random thing comes to mind, like duck migrations or shit like that.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 07:58:27 No.13840826 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840495
Exactly what happened to me. Saved up enough money for a deposit on an apartment. Bank said no because I was a postdoc.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 08:08:47 No.13840840 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840749
>Most professors just research what they know will secure funding until their old fucks.

But that's the thing. If every professor is already rich then they'll mostly self-fund or pull funds from their rich friends. Plenty of people looking to hand our charitable donations out of their taxes to something that isn't some random charity that blows most donations on cocaine and then maybe gives out 1% to starving children.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 08:21:43 No.13840858 Report

Quoted By: >>13840865

>>13840278
How much do you think Professors earn lol? Even public uni profs make 6 figures. They tend to earn over the median of industry salaries in their field (this is the bare minimum needed to attract them).

Anyway most Profs live in the (white) suburbs especially if they have kids. Contrary to not being on the property ladder, Profs often own many of those hyperexpensive student flat scams that you've been renting from.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 08:27:28 No.13840865 Report

Quoted By: >>13840935

>>13840858
Well, I know tenured professors do make lots of cash but the thing with tenure is how much it takes to get it.

I'm talking more like a full time university professor with 2-5 years of experience. At worse they are on their second postdoc, at best they are some kind of adjunct professor with a contract, not an actual job. And these are people with PhDs so to have actual 2-5 years of experience so we are talking 30+ years old adults.

I don't think those people own entire student flats. Maybe most of the professors you saw were really old (50+) and had money, but behind them is an army of depressed 30-somethings making minimum wage on their third postdocs.

I know it's hard to believe but look it up. Fun fact: your 50+ year old professors making bank did not actually make that much money all the way from their 20s. Odds are they lived below the poverty line before getting lucky and earning that tenure.2N

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 08:42:19 No.13840892 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840653
Look I don't know about average industry/finance wages in your country (although I'm assuming you earn way above average anyway), but in mine they aren't that great. I'm still a postdoc which is theoretically the low point in academic income (I'm doing it at a national lab so I'm not even allowed to do consulting right now), but I have a higher net worth than any of my old undergrad friends and statistically I'm in the top 10% of my age (not great, but considering how many STEM grads there are I'm doing better than most). This is on top of supporting a wife with a baby on the way.

You guys are way too allergic to renting, when it's financially optimal to rent even if you can afford buying a flat to rent out to others (I DO own property btw, I don't live in it or even rent it out). The problem isn't really low income, it's that my colleagues are ignorant about wealth building. I suspect the main the difference is that if you start working in finance you are surrounded by colleagues who talk about it all the time and you become more aware of what you need to do if you want to acquire financial independence. Money is also basically your life, no one would do banking work if it wasn't for the money so you tend to "brag" about income a lot, but I find it really cringe when I meet people from Aerocon, family firms etc. and they are bragging about like literal 80-100k pleb wages. Meanwhile some of my colleagues are burning 20k annually on stupid shit like holidays in the Alps.

>tl;dr: Academia pays more or less on par with industry and you can absolutely afford a mortgage easy because you can build large deposits quickly from consulting etc. People who struggle just suck at wealth building (unless you are a literal wage slave, you earn enough).

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 08:46:09 No.13840900 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840656
>>13840675
It really isn't this simple at all. There's a good reason many speculators would rather have their apartments stand completely empty than to have tenants fuck up the place. Renting is usually cheaper than owning, especially if you rent outside the city and you're not afraid to squeeze your landlord for maintenance costs.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 09:00:18 No.13840935 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840749
Yeah this. I got redpilled pretty hard when a colleague here won the Leibniz prize (you get 2 mil to do whatever the fuck you want with). What does he spend it on? Supplemental funding to support staff doing the same shit he's always been doing and to squeeze out more papers on his other grant reports. He doesn't even like his field, but that's what he knows for keeping the lights on so that's what he does. Academic freedom is dead. You also can't support with your own wealth contrary to popular belief unless you have 9 figures to buy labspace on campus with. The game is far more political than that.

>>13840865
>I'm talking more like a full time university professor with 2-5 years of experience
That's not a bad paying contract.
>their second postdoc,
A postdoc is not a "professor".
> at best they are some kind of adjunct professor with a contract, not an actual job.
It depends on the conditions. Adjunct is usually what we give to researcher's wives who don't really care about their careers etc. Most people get Associate Professorships at this point which pays really well.
>And these are people with PhDs so to have actual 2-5 years of experience so we are talking 30+ years old adults.
Yes, so what? I know industry researchers and engineers making fuckall in their 30s. It all depends on how good you are. Btw the average banker joins a graduate programme then gets dropped. You have to actually be good to get those senior positions. Every career has its losers and winners, academia has far more losers than winners though.
>making minimum wage on their third postdocs
No postdoc gets paid minimum wage lol. You do realize that postdocs at good labs make 120k right? It's not "good money", but you seem to be under the impression that researchers are paid like gradstudents. It all depends on how good you are and what contracts you can get.

Anonymous

Anonymous Thu 11 Nov 2021 12:09:02 No.13841377 Report

Quoted By:

>>13840675
i mean solicitor/agent fees can get steep along with any title/land registry stuff
then if you want to move you pay these fees all over again
if you arent sure you are staying somewhere for 4-5 years then renting is a reasonable option
especially if there are tax breaks/gov schemes with regard to first time buyers
and some peoples families just have money to burn so renting is easier

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